Alfredo Vea - Gods Go Begging

Table of Contents

Critical Acclaim for Alfredo Va and Gods Go Begging

Written in a style that is urgent and poetic lit by

phosphorescent desire and shadowed by heartbreaking waste.

The Baltimore Sun

A terrific book: street-smart, savage, brutally funny but also

intelligent and compassionate.

San Jose Mercury News

A meditation on the Vietnam War and on race, desire, and urban

gang wars [that] equals the passion and originality of [Vas] earlier

work He is becoming one of Californias best novelists.

Los Angeles Times

A tightly wrapped tale of mystery, desire, hopelessness, and

death Va composes his plot with great skill, leaving the

reader strongly convinced of his storys credibility.

Publishers Weekly

An ambitious, complex story tracing the efforts of

several men and women to put the horrors of

Vietnam behind them gripping and intriguing.

Kirkus Reviews

A practicing criminal defense attorney and the author of two previous novels, La Maravilla and TheSilver Cloud Caf (both available in Plume editions), Alfredo Va was born in Arizona and lived the life of a migrant worker before being sent to Vietnam. After his discharge, he worked a series of jobsfrom truck driver to carnival mechanicas he put himself through law school. Winner of the 1999 Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for Fiction, Gods Go Begging was also named one of the Best Books of 1999 by the Los Angeles Times. Va lives in San Francisco.

A riveting tour de force Alfredo Va has become

one of Americas most important fabulists.

Brick , A Literary Journal , Toronto

A stunning novel that draws on the authors own

experience in Vietnam. A beautifully crafted story of

emotional scars and battles.

Strictly Books

Va expertly marries the magical realism of Gabriel Garca

Mrquez to his visceral accounts of battle. Indeed, whether we

measure by the breadth of his imagination, the strength of

his characters, or the hallucinatory power of his prose, there

seems to be no novelistic terrain that Va cant conquer.

[http://amazon.com] amazon.com

A passionate expos on war and desire.

[http://Latinolink.com] Latinolink.com

Va is a very good writer, powering up a scene

with description and dialogue. He keeps the

readers attention from first page to last.

Library Journal

A hybrid of court drama, dramatic fiction, murder mystery,

and war novel Uses flashbacks, fever dreams, and

recollections to bring the elements of the book together.

Albuquerque Journal

Praise for the previous novels of Alfredo Va

The Silver Cloud Caf

Blends Gabriel Garca Mrquez and Raymond Chandler.

San FranciscoChronicle

Va has passion and imagination Engaging.

Los AngelesTimes

Ambitious, energetic A highly original, moving work.

Kirkus Reviews

LaMaravilla

Beautifully written, thematically vital.

Los Angeles Times

Powerful enchanting From the very first

sentence I was trapped and could not resist.

Isabel Allende

A lustily told tale La Maravilla almost does it all.

The WashingtonPost

In the search for the Great American Novel, its time

to start looking in this direction Unforgettable.

East Bay Express

ALSO BY ALFREDO VA

The Silver Cloud Caf

LaMaravilla

PLUME

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition.

First Plume Printing, September

Copyright Alfredo Va, 1999

All rights reserved

Lines from The Worlds Wonders from The Selected Poems of Robinson Jeffers by Robinson Jeffers. Copyright 1951 by Robinson Jeffers.

REGISTERED TRADEMARK MARCA REGISTRADA

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Dutton edition as follows:

Vea, Alfredo.

Gods go begging / Alfredo Va.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-17398-5

I. Title.

PS3572.E2G63 1999

813.54- dc21 99-14338

CIP

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHERS NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION. PENGUIN PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET. NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

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dedicated to all the boys on all the hills.

Thank you

Rosemary Ahern, Sandy Dijkstra, Hong Thuc Ha,

Shannon Raintree, Jeff Biggers, Carla Paciotto, Edmund K. Oasa.

Thanks to all the vets who shared their stories with me.

Above all, thanks to Carole Conn.

It is easy to know the beauty of inhuman things, sea,

storm and mountain; it is their soul and their

meaning.

Humanity has its lesser beauty, impure and painful; we

have to harden our hearts to bear it.

I have hardened my heart only a little; I have learned

that happiness is important, but pain gives

importance.

The use of tragedy: Lear becomes as tall as the storm he

crawls in; and a tortured Jew became God.

Robinson Jeffers, The Worlds Wonders

the amazon luncheonette

For a time, they both held on to their lives, gasping softly, whispering feverishly, and bleeding profusely, their two minds far, far away from the cruel, burrowing bullets that had left them mere seconds away from death. Face to face, they spoke their last words in crimson-colored breaths. Theirs was a withering language, one for which there are no living speakers.

Then, like warriors abandoned on the field, they lay in unearthly calm as the things of life deserted them. They had seen the mad commotion boiling in the air above them. In bemused silence, they heard the alarms, the screams, and the growing wail of sirens.

Pronounced dead on a cold city sidewalk, they held on to each other as the gurney rolled from cement to asphalt and into a waiting ambulance for a long, anonymous ride. In the end it was clear to every onlooker that neither dying woman would ever let go of the other. Leaves of lemon grass had drifted to the ground from the dress pocket of one of the women, marking their trail to the ambulance. Some of the sprigs and blades were bloodstained, adding spice to the liquid life that had trickled away.